


Ovation

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Concerts, Existential Angst, M/M, Masturbation, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing Clothes, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-17 12:49:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8144639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Lawless imagines he can hear the whisper-faint drag of fingertips over smooth ivory, of Licht’s fingerprints catching to mark the shine of the piano before him with the promise of the music to come; and then Licht’s fingers flex, and Lawless shuts his eyes, and the music hits him like a blow." Lawless indulges himself in more ways than one during one of Licht's concerts.





	

Lawless arrives to the performance right on time.

It’s a matter of respect. Fashionably late arrivals are for those people who don’t appreciate art, who attend shows and performances more to be seen than to do the seeing themselves; Lawless knows what’s that like, can remember doing the same for previous Eves, for any number of the names so unimportant they have slipped from his memory like blood running through open fingers. But the same thing that has kept his newest Eve alive this long has kept Lawless on time for every one of Licht’s performances, and this is no exception; he arrives five minutes before the start of the concert, and finds his way to a shadowed-over seat in the farthest back corner of the hall, and settles himself into the space to wait.

He doesn’t check the program. He doesn’t need to; this is the third time in two days he’s seen Licht perform, after all, he knows the name of the pieces as well as his Eve by now. He just waits instead, hunching his shoulders in against the unfamiliar soft of the borrowed black hoodie pressing against his skin, and ignores the sideways glances he gets for his casual attire without so much as glancing away from the piano set untouched on the shining span of the stage in front of them. It’s a full room, Lawless can see the motion of hundreds of people like an irregular wave rippling across the seats in front of him as the murmur of dozens of low voices swells to fill the high arch of the ceiling overhead; but the performance isn’t sold out, not quite, and much though Lawless resents this foolishness from those people who were idiotic enough to miss such an opportunity he’s grateful for the isolation it grants him in the back corner of the hall, where the black of his clothes makes him into nearly a shadow of his own, as if he might just disappear into the dark of the space without anyone ever realizing he was there at all. He’s safe enough just being in the audience -- Licht never looks up from the piano keys once he starts playing, and Lawless knows how blinding-bright the stage lights are to anyone upon the shining surface -- but with the sweater around his shoulders and the hood pulled up over his hair, he thinks Licht wouldn’t be able to pick him out from the crowd even if he knew for a fact Lawless was there.

Which, given Lawless’s intentions for the evening, is exactly what he wants.

He waits until the lights dim, waits until the spotlights have clicked on to flood the stage with their glow like the bright of an artificial sun, waits until the unimportant announcer has listed Licht’s impressive lineup of accomplishments and praised his “budding skill from such a young age.” It’s the usual inanity, the kind of thing that usually grits Lawless’s teeth and aches unpleasantly against the inside of his chest; but tonight he ignores it, just keeps staring at the shine of the too-bright light off the endless black of the piano and waits, because this is unimportant, this is all just the needless preamble for the main event, and he and everyone else in the room knows it. The murmurs go silent as the announcer concludes his introduction, hundreds of breaths catch to a stillness not unlike Lawless’s own; and then the announcer gestures grandly offstage, and Licht steps out into the light, and the room collapses into a roar of applause that wholly eclipses the helpless sound Lawless makes in the back of his throat as he sags back against the support of his chair. His blood is hot in his veins, his whole body beginning to tremble with the first trickle of the adrenaline that will hit him like a flood in a moment, and when Licht lifts his chin to scowl out at the audience Lawless has to shut his eyes, has to tip his head back against the chair behind him and work through a breath as mentally essential as it is physically unnecessary. He feels like his heart is pounding on anticipation, feels like his breathing is stalling against the inside of his chest; and then the room goes silent, the lingering weight of enthusiastic applause dying to the strain of silent anticipation, and Lawless would swear his long-still heart skips over a beat against the cage of his ribs. He shifts back against his chair, feels the soft of the hoodie he stole out of Licht’s unattended bedroom pressing against his skin with a gentleness wholly unlike what he usually receives at Licht’s hand, and as Licht stretches his fingers to trail against the polished keys Lawless can feel his skin tingle with as much anticipation as if it is his body that Licht is about to play upon. He imagines he can hear the whisper-faint drag of skin over smooth ivory, of Licht’s fingerprints catching to mark the shine of the piano before him with the promise of the music to come; and then Licht’s fingers flex, and Lawless shuts his eyes, and the music hits him like a blow.

The first chord resonates in his heart, thudding against his chest as if with the rhythm of life so far gone Lawless has no memory of it left to hold to. He gasps a breath, the sound too loud for the silence of the audience around him, but it doesn’t matter; Licht is continuing, carrying on uninterrupted as he always does, once he begins, and the spill of the music is more than enough to hide Lawless’s helpless response, more than enough to drown his reaction as completely as it does his awareness. Lawless’s head is tipped back against the seat behind him, his eyes shut behind the frames of his glasses, but it doesn’t matter; there are still white feathers flickering before his vision, he can still hear the weight of the music like wingbeats against the inside of his chest. It’s moving the still blood in his veins, stirring fire back into skin so long cold Lawless thought it would never warm again, and he can feel himself going hard inside his pants as if it really is his own body beneath the drag and press of Licht’s fingertips, as if the return of heat to his blood is enough all alone to remind his body of the aching desire that so often feels like a dream, like something abandoned years before until Licht reminds him, as he did the first time, as he does every time. The tremor of his music in the air is enough all alone to break past the exterior Lawless has cultivated for decades, to shatter Lawless’s defenses and leave him trembling and vulnerable and wanting, aching all through his self for something too unreachable for him to ever find alone.

Lawless doesn’t think about what his hands are doing. It’s not rationality that has him now; it’s Licht, it’s Licht’s music, it’s the heat in his veins answering the other’s playing with the crystal-clear appreciation for true art that Lawless can no more shake from himself than he can tear out the ache in his throat for the heat of blood. He doesn’t consciously reach for the hem of the hoodie, don’t think about fitting his fingers under the soft give of dark fabric; it’s instinctive, reflexive, his fingers drawn as surely by the chords of Licht’s playing as if there are strings wrapped around them. The dark of the cloth is enough to fade into the shadows as his usual clothes do not, and there’s no one in the whole of his row anyway; with the music to catch the pant of his breathing and the rest of the audience as enraptured by Licht’s playing as they should be, Lawless can act without the pressure of an audience of his own, can fade into the background of the crowd instead of being a performer in his own right. His shorts are loose, the waistband hanging low enough on his hips that all he has to do is pull them up by an inch to grant himself enough slack to slide his fingers down under them, and then he’s closing his grip around himself and taking a deep breath of dark air and letting the sound of Licht’s music urge him to action.

It’s hard to move. There’s not much space for Lawless to shift his wrist more than an inch, and even then it has to be slow; the darkness around him will only go so far in disguising what he’s doing, and the last thing he wants is to interrupt or be interrupted. But there’s a low thrum in Licht’s music, a rhythm falling slower under the bright splash of the higher, almost frantic notes; it feels like a heartbeat, like Licht’s heartbeat, like Lawless’s, like they’re sharing a slow rhythm of existence that can bring Lawless to the heat now spilling through veins so long cold the touch of warmth feels like fire and makes him shiver. He presses his fingertips against himself, and angles his wrist to brace against the edge of his shorts, and when he moves it’s in time with that rhythm, following Licht’s lead until he can feel every note like thunder in his veins, in his thoughts, a beat to steer him forward towards an inevitability like the death he’s never faced himself.

Lawless gasps a breath. He doesn’t need it, not really -- but his chest feels pressurized, like it’s aching with emotion or want or tension all together, and he needs the habit of an inhale, needs to fill his lungs with the sound in the air like he’s breathing Licht’s touch into the very marrow of his bones. The hoodie is soft against his neck, the fabric clinging to the smell of Licht’s skin even with the other distanced by space and the glare of spotlights; if Lawless turns his head he can press his nose against the give of the fabric, can make out the suggestion of iron underneath the lighter, almost floral scent of Licht’s skin. Licht must have bled against the fabric before, maybe in the aftermath of a fight or from a careless motion with a barely-healed bitemark; the scent lingers, either left unwashed for a few days of use or clinging even after the liberal application of detergent. Lawless breathes it in, the bite of the iron, the weight of metal, like proof of the steel that hides just out of sight beneath Licht’s fragile cheekbones and delicate fingers, evidence of the strength that lets Licht slam Lawless to the floor with one well-placed kick, that lets him stand tall and glare into the face of the mortality that Lawless can’t bear to face even secondhand. It makes him shine the brighter, Lawless thinks, makes him glow like the sun with a thousand points of dying light all at once, and at moments like this Lawless thinks he could face it too, could turn his back on centuries of survival and instead face a brief flicker of a human life with Licht’s music to guide him to seeing the transcendent beauty in such an existence.

It goes on for what feels like an infinity, for what seems to span mere heartbeats. Every chord of Licht’s music resonates through Lawless’s veins, unmaking and reforming him and vanishing into nothing, fading away to be lost to time and the failures of memory as if it had never been there at all; but it’s enough to clench Lawless’s breathing into gasping heat, to arch his spine and tighten his fingers, and still there’s that smell of Licht against the hoodie, the soft of the fabric against his skin, and the weight of the music, Licht’s fingertips forcing Lawless down into unbearable pleasure the same way they always do, the same way they always have. Lawless goes unseen, or maybe he doesn’t; he doesn’t open his eyes to check, for once doesn’t care about the attention or disinterest of those around him. Everything fades to unimportance, even him, even his own existence, until when Licht’s fingers draw the ringing notes of a crescendo from the piano Lawless almost doesn’t feel his orgasm as physical pleasure as much as a culmination, a conclusion, an _Exuent_ from a stage he has always been trapped on. His attention scatters, lost like the shimmer of applause from a satisfied audience, his persona flickers away like an adopted role at the conclusion of a play, and all that’s left is the ache of friction sharp and burning at his wrist, and the soft of the hoodie pressing to his skin, and the last notes of Licht’s concert ringing bright like bells in his ears. Lawless feels the sticky proof of satisfaction clinging to his skin and the inside of Licht’s hoodie alike, hears the first shocked silence of the audience give way to the roar of approval as they rise to their feet to shower applause down towards the bright of the stage; and he stays where he is, with his head tipped back against the support of his chair and his gaze fixed unseeing on the line of the roof overhead.

“Bravo,” he murmurs, too softly to be heard over the cheers of the crowd, and shuts his eyes on his dim-lit surroundings. “Bravo, Licht-tan.”

He imagines he can hear the flutter of wings under the surging sound of the crowd’s cheers.


End file.
